In Parting
by Marguerite1
Summary: It's 2017 and the staff has gathered one more time.


**IN PARTING**

Classification: Post-administration. Character Death. Angst.   
Summary: "No one understood what it was like to be a Beatle   
except the other Beatles, and it's like that for us, too." 

*** 

2017   


"It's time." 

They get identical messages, all of them, and from near and far they answer the   
summons. 

CJ and Sam travel together from San Francisco. CJ watches Sam kiss his wife and   
kids goodbye, Wendy with her hair kept dazzlingly red after all these years, and   
the three kids who might as well have been parthenogenically derived from their   
father, two boys and a little girl with black, black hair and Sam's depthless,   
innocent blue eyes. 

For herself, CJ has kept up well with her health and her looks, her figure trim   
thanks to exercise and dancing, lines kept at bay with the best creams, and her   
hair long enough to cover the slight sag of her jawline. She kisses Wendy on   
each cheek and hugs the two kids who aren't too big to be hugged, then offers a   
jaunty salute to the eldest, who already has some of the Seaborn weariness   
around his eyes. 

"Love you," Sam and Wendy say to one another as they part. 

CJ and Sam sit on the plane side by side. "How's Josh taking it?" CJ asks. She   
doesn't talk to him enough, doesn't really see any of them except Sam, and even   
that is rare. 

"He sounded resigned. He was up there a few weeks ago and said he isn't   
surprised." And it's Sam's turn to ask about someone he doesn't see often. "Did   
you talk to Toby?" 

She did, and she turns away from Sam as sunlight streams through the window   
because the touch of gold makes her skin look sallow. "He sounded depressed." 

"Well hell, CJ, we're all depressed. I mean, we knew, but we didn't really..." 

"I know." 

They eat their first-class meal in silence except for the clinking of their   
silverware against the china. CJ drinks wine, more than she really needs,   
perhaps to fortify herself against the reason. 

"Toby and I fought the last time we talked, you know," she says idly to Sam, who   
nods. 

"Yeah, I heard about that." 

"I thought you hadn't talked to him." 

"I didn't, but he called Donna and yelled at her about it, so it got back to   
me." 

CJ smirks, imagining how little of Toby's egotistical bullshit Donna would take.   
She'd married into ego, knowing Josh needed his peacemaker as much as his   
pacemaker. Donna's as old now as CJ had been when the MS scandal broke, and the   
thought makes her both nostalgic and apprehensive. 

Josh meets them at the airport, Donna by his side. When had Josh started using a   
cane? And when had his hair turned the gray of steel wool? And how the hell did   
Donna's breasts stay way up there, no matter how thin she was? Dammit. 

They embrace, the four of them, Sam going first to Josh, hugging him gently but   
for a long time. "I'm sorry I didn't come out for the surgery," he says softly.   
"Maggie and Ethan both had chicken pox and I didn't know if you'd ever had it,   
so I couldn't risk infecting you." 

"It's okay. Abbey came, did you know that?" 

At the mention of Abbey's name, the four faces all turn solemn. CJ feels the   
narrow bones of Donna's ribs as they stand with their arms around each other's   
waists, taller than the men, unabashed by it, glorious women still amazing   
enough to turn heads. 

"Joshua," CJ says softly, and he opens his arms to her the way he always has.   
God, he's frail, he's too damn skinny, and he carries himself stiffly. For a   
moment she recalls Leo's odd gait and finds it ironic that Josh now has a   
distinctive walk as well. 

At least Sam doesn't mirror his counterpart. Disgustingly healthy, Sam is, even   
more beautiful in his fifties than in his childishly lovely thirties, more   
beautiful than Donna as he holds her tight against his blue-suited body, more   
beautiful than the sunlight in the eyes that are still as bright as the   
California sky. 

"Are we at the Hyatt?" Sam asks as he looks toward Donna's dove-gray suitcases.   
CJ spots Josh's latest backpack and grins when she sees that it's on wheels.   
Then she remembers why he can't lift anything heavy and the smile evaporates. 

"No, we're staying at their place. It's quite a compound. There's a carriage   
house, believe it or not, they've set aside for Donna and me, and the rest of   
you have the third floor guest rooms. I went ahead and got a limo for us." 

"Is Toby...?" 

He smirks at CJ and it erases fifteen years from his face and he's Josh again,   
Deputy Chief of Staff Joshua Lyman, the wonder boy, the phoenix rising from his   
own ashes to win the impossible second term. Their victory lap, or their last   
hurrah, depending on CJ's mood when she thinks about it. 

"Toby's in the bar," Josh says. "And I don't think it's the first bar he's been   
to today, either." 

Sam's face flushes and his mouth turns downward. On the plane with CJ he had   
told her about their last conversation, when he told Toby to go to AA or   
something but not to call him at three in the morning anymore because it was   
making him an enabler. 

"Goddammit, Sam," Toby had bellowed, his voice thick with scotch and anguish,   
"Did you learn nothing from me in all those years of speechwriting in the White   
House?" 

And Sam, best-selling author of a number of books on politics and the media,   
told CJ that he had hung up on his mentor and made slow, depressed love to   
Wendy. 

"I'll get him," CJ says, loping gracelessly in the direction of the bar. Her   
knees always ache after a long flight, and the high heels she wears with her   
best navy-blue suit exacerbate the pain. 

Toby's morose and overweight and his hair's the same iron gray as Josh's, but   
coarse and unkempt. His eyes are red, whether from alcohol or grief or fear she   
can't tell, but she comes up to him and puts her arms around the softness at his   
waist. 

"Hey," she murmurs into his nape, and when his arms enfold her she knows all is   
forgiven. 

"It's awful," he whispers, slurring the "s" a little. 

"I know, I know. But Sam's here, and Josh and Donna, and we're ready to go if   
you are." 

"Sam..." 

"Just go. Get off the bar stool and go." She fishes in her pocketbook for money,   
leaving a wad of bills on the bar because she knows Toby's an annoying drunk,   
and leads him by the hand to the baggage claim area. 

"He followed me home," CJ says, trying to sound relatively cheerful. "Can I keep   
him?" 

"You have to walk him and feed him," Josh says, pushing Sam forward. 

Sam, famous, powerful Sam, stares at his shoes, not looking Toby in the eye. 

"Oh, for the love of God," Donna groans, and she moves between the two men,   
grabbing each by the hand and joining them together. Toby's grip shakes but   
Sam's is steady, like the man himself, and he yanks hard enough to pull Toby   
into his arms. 

They don't speak, these men of words, they just hold one another, and Josh has   
tears in his eyes, and so does Donna, and CJ stares at them and wonders why they   
look kaleidoscopic until she realizes that she's seeing them through her own   
lens of salt water. 

"We gotta go," Donna reminds them, used to organization and schedules, and the   
five of them head for the sleek black limo. 

There used to be a dozen or more in their motorcade but today it's just one car.   
Donna looks happy to be between Sam and Josh. CJ always wondered if Donna had   
been between them in more ways than one, but Sam is ecstatically happy with   
Wendy and Josh would have died five times over had it not been for "his" Donna. 

Toby looks unenthusiastically at the landscape as Sam extols its virtues.   
"Bucolic. Fecund. Verdant," he says, pointing at fields of an astonishing,   
impossible emerald green. 

"Verbose," Toby says back, but there's a glint of humor in those black eyes. 

Donna pats Sam on the arm. "Will Charlie be there, do you think?" 

It had ended badly, the relationship between Charlie and Zoey, in the manner of   
relationships begun in the flower of youth and tempered too soon by tragedy.   
Before the second term had ended, Charlie had gone to college full-time not so   
much out of a need to begin his education but to get away from Zoey's anger and   
her father's disappointment. 

"Abbey said she'd asked him. I think...surely they can put aside..." Josh has   
trouble speaking, leaning over the head of his cane with his forehead on his   
clasped hands. 

"We're about to find out," CJ says as they draw near to the guarded gates. "Oh,   
my God, it's Ellie!" 

She's standing at the gate, slim and slightly hunched over as if to avoid   
showing her vulnerability, even after becoming a highly respected cardiologist.   
It had been Ellie who had been called in the dead of night when Josh's heart   
began to fail, Ellie who had flown out to perform the implantation of the   
pacemaker, Ellie who had saved the life of the one man who had never treated her   
as the least of the three daughters. 

Ellie, prodigal daughter, welcomes the weary party. She grabs bags, asks Josh if   
he's taken his pills, and shows them to the carriage house. It's a pretty place,   
all light and windows and pale wood floors, and CJ wishes there were room for   
her there. But Ellie leads the rest of their party forward, to the gabled green   
house, past the reporters waiting on the patio in respectful silence, and takes   
them through the back entry. 

"You have this entrance just for yourselves. Steve, Mark, these are Sam Seaborn,   
CJ Cregg, and Toby Ziegler," she says to the two Secret Service men who stand   
guard. "They'll get pins for you sometime soon, and some for Josh and Donna. I'm   
so glad you could come." 

"I'm sorry about the circumstances," Sam says, his voice gentle. His is the   
first room on the floor, and CJ gets the big, airy room in the middle while Toby   
gets a dark-paneled corner suite filled with books. They're told to meet Abbey   
downstairs at six. 

CJ unpacks quickly, her array of professional clothes facing the same way on the   
hangers, her shoes paired up like beige soldiers. A part of her that hasn't been   
touched in far, far too long begins to ache, and she is too restless to wait   
around in her room. 

She goes down the back stairs and heads to the carriage house. As she lifts her   
hand to knock she sees Donna, arms high over her head, laughing at something   
Josh has just said. His back is to her, he's sitting down, and Donna deftly   
removes the pins holding her hair in its demure bun as she leans over her   
husband. The blonde waterfall cascades over Josh, a loving baptism, and CJ has   
to turn away from the sheer intimacy of the scene. 

On the way back she spots a green sedan coming through the gates. She peers into   
the window, shading her eyes from the glare of sunlight on tinted glass, and   
lets out a gasp. 

"Charlie!" she cries, even though his windows are rolled up and he can't hear   
her. He halts the car just a few feet from her and gets out, Charlie is all   
grown up and a lawyer and still so grave, but then they're all grave this   
weekend. 

"CJ," he says as if he's seen her every day for the past eleven years instead of   
once, three years ago, at Leo's funeral. He's a sleekly handsome man, as sober   
as the occasion warrants, his smile all too fleeting. He takes a single suitcase   
out of the car and follows her to the bedroom across the hall from Toby's. 

Sam spots him and smiles. "Look at you. My God, Charlie, you look great!" 

"Thanks, Sam," he says. His voice is stiff. "Did you have a good flight?" 

"Yeah, CJ and I came together, and we met Josh and Donna and Toby at the   
airport. I just wish..." His voice breaks and he lowers his head. 

"I know. Look, I'm gonna get settled and....what are we doing?" 

"We're talking to Abbey and the girls at six." 

"Have you seen...?" 

"Not yet. We just got here ourselves." 

"Ah." Charlie looks out of place. Startled, CJ realizes that it's because he's   
on a different plane than he was in the White House, that he's their equal, a   
man with education and success written in his proud posture. "I'll see you down   
there, then." He disappears into his room and Sam stares at the closed door. 

"Sam, he's had to swallow a lot of pride to come here today. Don't take it   
personally," CJ says. 

But Sam takes everything personally, always did. Got angry when he told her he   
was engaged to Wendy and CJ had laughed, calling him "Peter Pan." Got angry when   
he found out about Donna's miscarriage three weeks after the rest of them did.   
Got angry when Toby's book came out and he was third from the end of   
acknowledgements. 

"Boomeranger," Toby always called it, because it made Sam fly away from them and   
return, fly away and return. 

They all end up closing their doors. From next door CJ hears a shower running   
and Toby singing "Nessun Dorma" in a key Puccini never dreamed of. She doesn't   
even knock, just goes into his room and into his shower after shedding clothes   
like leaves in a high wind. His body responds to hers, hard where hers is   
yielding, the rhythm familiar even in this strange setting and after all these   
years. 

Her palms are flat against the shower wall and she bites into the soft flesh at   
the back of her wrist to keep from crying out. Toby hums his aria again,   
although he has trouble catching his breath, and at the end he moans her name so   
longingly that she almost comes from the joy of it. His fingers, calloused where   
he clutches a pen too many hours a day, stroke her until she really does come,   
spasms shaking her so hard that she loses her balance and falls in a graceless   
heap at his feet. 

He helps her up and kisses her once, twice, a third time, and breathes his love   
into her ear. She wants to believe him, needs to know that it's not the fumes of   
alcohol still in his system, not just a shared need to cheat death by this   
living act, aches to have him tell her again. Instead she gives him a rough   
kiss, full of promise and energy, and goes back to her room to dry her hair and   
change her clothes. 

Church bells chime the hour and like figures in a cuckoo clock they all emerge   
from their rooms, heading in an orderly line to where the women are waiting for   
them. 

They're already talking to Josh and Donna. Liz looks exactly like her mother.   
Ellie is hanging back and holding Josh's hand as if checking his pulse, and Zoey   
is standing at wary attention as she scans the group for Charlie's face. 

"Oh, look at you," Abbey says. In true grande dame fashion she's let her hair go   
an attractive silver and she's wearing the pearls her children had bought her on   
her sixtieth birthday. Her scent is still Shalimar. God knows where she's   
getting it since it's not made anymore. CJ kisses her cheek, then turns to   
embrace each of the daughters in turn. 

"I think he's scared," she whispers into Zoey's ear, and sure enough, Charlie is   
standing back behind Toby. 

Zoey's manners kick in and she walks right up to him. "I'm glad you're here,   
Charlie," she says, and with a pang CJ remembers the bitter fights that tore   
them apart, the nights Zoey wept in her office while Charlie roamed the halls   
like a ghost. Charlie manages a shy smile and a little hug, repeated for Liz and   
Ellie. It's Abbey he holds close, making her beam as she rocks him back and   
forth. 

Annie, crowding thirty now, joins the group. She's the image of her grandmother,   
elegant and worldly, planning to enter practice with her Aunt Ellie when she   
completes her residency. Third generation surgeon. 

CJ feels old, stiff. Toby slips her hand into the crook of his elbow and pats   
it. 

"It's time," Abbey says softly. 

The study is huge, a two-story library complete with fireplace. Where   
comfortable chairs would be there is instead a hospital bed, albeit a   
state-of-the-art model with cashmere throws for warmth. Monitors and wires and   
tubes are everywhere. CJ's heart thumps in an ominous tempo. It's what Sam had   
said earlier, about knowing but not really knowing, and from the hesitant   
footfall of her friends she can tell that everyone else feels the same way. 

"Father Michael gave him the last rites a few minutes ago. He can't talk," Liz   
warns them, "but he'll recognize you, and he can hear you." 

They stand in an awkward semicircle. CJ's gaze travels to a portrait of Leo   
standing among the family pictures at the bedside. How she's missed Leo these   
last three years, the glue that held them together, gone after an agonizing bout   
with liver cancer. 

Josh goes first, holding Donna's hand and leaning on the bed rail instead of his   
cane. CJ can't see them, her view blocked by Charlie and Toby, and she can't   
really make out their words, but she can hear Donna's little sob and the way   
Josh's voice quavers as he says farewell. 

She can't watch, can't listen, as Toby and Sam and Charlie each take their   
leave, Charlie lingering a little longer until Zoey wraps her arm around his   
slim waist and pulls him back. And then she has to go, has to look, has to come   
to grips with this newest, rawest reality. 

There's little of the man she knew in the wizened face, just the   
robin's-egg-blue of his eyes still gleaming out of the wreckage of his body. His   
mind, thank God, has remained intact, and there is still an intelligent spark   
behind the desperate longing for release. She sees him incline his head a little   
toward the picture of Leo, and she smiles tenderly at him. "Tell him we miss   
him," she murmurs, then she bends down to kiss the pale, wrinkled forehead.   
"Goodbye, sir," she manages to say, and when he frowns at her she realizes what   
he wants, what made the others weep, even Toby. 

So she corrects herself. "Goodbye, Jed," and at that his blue-gray lips turn   
upwards in a smile. 

CJ steps back, watching Zoey grasp Charlie's hand and lead him once more to her   
father's bedside. Liz shows the rest of them to the well-stocked dining room.   
They sit down, but no one can eat. No one even drinks. Donna puts her head down   
on her folded arms, her shoulders shaking, and Josh wraps himself around her   
like smoke. 

"We shouldn't be here for this," Sam says softly. He fingers the tassels at the   
corner of the tablecloth. 

"He wanted to see us," Toby replies, but he sounds as shaken as the rest of   
them. 

"No. I mean it shouldn't have taken this to get us all here, together." He drops   
the tassels and makes an expansive, sweeping gesture. "We're so distant from one   
another, so removed, and, frankly, we haven't been doing too well. Some worse   
than others," he says, looking directly at Toby. 

"Fuck you, Sam," Toby says, but that's not what he means. 

"We were the senior staff. We shaped the way America's policies were drawn for   
eight years. No one understands but us what it was like. Without each other..."   
He has to stop, and he runs his palms over the silver wings at his temples. 

Toby puts his hands on CJ's shoulders, kneading the tension away as he speaks.   
"No one understood what it was like to be a Beatle except the other Beatles, and   
it's like that for us, too." 

"So we were the Bartles," Josh quips, eliciting a hiccuping chuckle from Donna.   
"And Toby's Ringo." 

"You wanna step outside and say that?" Toby challenges. Even Sam smiles a   
little. 

"I'm just saying that we shouldn't see each other just because there's a trauma.   
That we can't let each other go through life alone." Sam pauses to clear his   
throat. His oratory skills aren't polished, but he speaks from the most   
affectionate of all their hearts. "We can't let this be the last time." 

They are silent. 

Josh begins to cry. Sam rushes to embrace him, his own tears falling and   
mingling with his old friend's. Toby wraps his arms around CJ's waist, her back   
against his chest, and they wait together. 

An hour passes, then Zoey comes to see them. Her eyes are bright but dry, and   
she is able to say the words. "He's gone." 

CJ crosses herself. 

"He was the best man I ever knew," Josh murmurs, drying his own tears before   
standing up to embrace Zoey. "The world's not going to be the same without him." 

"Thank you, Josh." Her voice climbs on his name, breaking like a soap bubble.   
Charlie comes in and takes her hands in his. 

"The First...Abbey...would like you to make the statement to the press, CJ." 

She nods, smoothing her skirt, and walks in front of her colleagues. Sam   
scribbles furiously in a note pad as CJ joins Abbey, pale but composed, on the   
porch. CJ puts on her glasses and takes the hastily-written page from Sam's   
fingers. 

"Ladies and gentlemen, I regret to inform you that former President Josiah   
Bartlet passed away at 7:24 this evening following a long battle with Multiple   
Sclerosis." She pauses for the sympathetic murmur from the reporters. "His was   
the finest mind and the noblest heart of his time. Those of us who had the   
honor...the privilege..." 

Her composure deserts her, but Toby does not. He steps to her side, beckoning   
Sam, Donna, and Josh to follow, and the five of them stand together. 

"...the privilege," CJ continues, "of serving at the pleasure of the President,   
join the First Family in their sorrow at losing a loved one, and in their joy   
that he is released from his suffering and has gone to be with God." 

"You said it right," comes the President's voice from somewhere just beyond the   
range of mortal hearing. CJ sees the others startle and she wonders what they   
heard, then she sees Abbey smile wistfully as color returns to her face. They'll   
talk about it later, over the tea and little sandwiches sitting out in the   
dining room, and promise to keep in touch. Maybe now, with Abbey's tears so   
fresh in their memories, it will not be the same vain pledge made for the past   
decade. 

She feels a warm breeze caress her cheek with the gentlest of touches, and she   
makes a promise to the departing soul, a vow as unbreakable, as unending, as his   
love. 

***   
END 

Feedback is appreciated at marguerite@swbell.net.   
Back to West Wing fiction. 

For AJ, who needed angst and a shower, with love and hugs. Thanks to the Onions   
for much-needed support and suggestions.   
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  



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